Friday, June 22, 2007

Apologies internet - life overflowed into that spare blog portion of life, and I am only now managing to crawl back into some semblance of resuming our regular programming.

Last week, I suddenly decided to do something about the "career" portion of my life. So I filled in a few forms and, what the heck, seeing as there are no real jobs for me in Paradise the world and I have agreed that I have to go back to my old ogress boss (that would be me) and work it smart this time.

Therefore I spent the week in study mode, doing a course and getting together my bits and bobs for a business plan, and hopefully by the end of the year I will have the money rolling in. Or at least nodding in my direction more often.

This week, as well as being studious and entrepreneurial, I have been extra chilly. Mobs of cold dwellers around the world may scoff and call me soft when I say that we only got a maximum of 11.4 degrees on Wednesday (52.5 farenheit for all you imperialists) but if I explain that we are used to being overjoyed at the balmy weather rather than feeling the chill through our bones and toes, we are more used to kicking off the sheets rather than hogging the doona, more accustomed to barefoot and sarong rather than gloves and overcoats - well, you could feel a little pity for us, couldn't you?

The house I live in is delightful - captures breezes, lets out nasty daytime heat - not ideal for living through the coldest day IN RECORDED HISTORY!!

We expect Winter to last until next week - goodness knows what we would do if it set in for a fortnight or more!!!

On top of the studious, entrepreneurial, chilly life this week, there was the added disadvantage advantage of too many blokes on the building site V having to work less strenuously this week - partly due to the size of the block they are working on (postage) and the willingness of the workforce (overly eager after a wet week) and partly due to another day or two of inclement weather.

The absolute upside of this is that I didn't have to worry about any housework as there was a warm and willing body up to the stresses of house husbandry my honey got to catch up on some quality domestic duties.

And thus, one large "TO DO" item got struck from our list - we no longer have need of a large white kitchen device with which to fulfil all our gastronomical inclinations - cause we went and got one, baby!! Yessir - decision to move on action in the morning, gathered up in my lunch break to do hit raids on all the whitegoods sales, advised in the afternoon of a lot of money promised and a project in the offing, entered the kitchen an hour later to meet the electrician as he departed and WE NOW HAVE A STOVE!!!!

Only drawback was that we were limited in choice to the narrower options as we REALLY didn't want to do a full kitchen renovation and we had a certain gap to fill - and unfortunately the chosen narrower option was still a fraction of an inch too wide - so I got to see V in his DIY glory - and we still get to see the dishes in that cupboard in their glory until we get around to finding one thing, sawing something else and putting it all back together. The worst bit about that was that we could have looked at wider options if we knew we were going to chop the cupboard anyway!!!

(For those of you concerned with my other whitegoods drama - the Electrolux Eco valve is now home and in working order again also!)

V also got added bonus points this week. While discussion 'Salina's size after he had been browsing the sales (one of those domestic duties, isn't it!) he turned to me and said "You're an 8 aren't you?"

Oh sweet, sweet V - then he popped his own balloon by qualifying it "in shoes, I mean."

Last week of the school term, so finally got to catch up with 'Salina's teacher this morning.

Her opening words to us were "'Salina is an enigma" - well, we had to agree with that!

The good news is that she is just as stubborn and pigheaded independent within the classroom as she is at home - yay, its not just us!!

The bad news is that every one of her more challenging foibles I recognised - a few from her father, but most of them because I lived it!

When we emerged, 'Salina and her friend wanted to see the report. Looking down the list of "S" (satisfactory - as in she is not stellar scholastically - probably explained by the next set of parenthesis) and "B" (as in "not applying herself" - hands up if you are the genetic contributor to this little trait!). Friend said quite smugly that she got mainly excellent - ah yes, but are you an enigma, dear?

Just cooked some chocolate chip cookies - do you KNOW how nice it is to have the biscuit baking option back on the agenda?

Also created a larger than life "to do" list - school holidays have coincided with career options, budget constraints and requests from far flung family to know movements and schedules over the next 17 days - so can tick off the blog and move on.

(Oh, little side note - when I finally got back here to blogworld, my efficient bloglines account had 791 unread posts waiting for me - eek - some I have added cause I liked the look once may have gotten short shift in my catching up - and although I have looked in at my favourites and regulars I didn't get to comment many - apologies - am going to flick the newbies off the read for a little so that I can get through the next little while sanely...)

Some newbies who will stay in my reader, though (and not on my sidebar yet) are:

It's been bloody cold up here too! I'm not sure how I would handle a high of 11 degrees now, being the wuss I have turned into. Bit scared though - off to country Victoria for a couple of weeks on August 1st. Think I'll be freezing...

Yaaayyy to surviving a parent-teacher interview....I am dreading mine which come after the holidays cause the teacher decided to take long service leave!

And yesssss....to the cold weather! I am freezing. We toasted marshmellows under our grill last Wed night when it only got to max 13 degrees. Brrrr! Hey...you can do that with your new stove now, too! ;)